Rank 7: Staying relevant in present while exciting the future- Nokia

Nokia has had an exciting year in terms of being the preferred partner for most of the operators in India for 4G expansion and 4G advanced upgrades. Other than that, it also had a lot of engagements on enabling VoLTE for the incumbent operators after Jio started offering voice over the 4G networks.

Nokia deployed LTE for incumbents including Airtel and Idea. Besides, it was also selected by BSNL for VoLTE enablement. The solutions provider also won contracts in several circles for deployment of Massive MIMO using 4G Advanced carrier aggregation technology helping operators to achieve higher throughputs by combining the various bands used for communication.

The company also virtualised the networks of some of the telcos that helps them achieve the flexibility and sets in the roadmap for 5G deployments as it prepares the networks. This strategy of Nokia to have an equal balance on the present opportunities while making the networks future ready, has helped them integrate the present networks with the future opportunities and hence being selected by various operators for deployments.

Another interesting trend for Nokia has been its growth beyond telecom in the traditional service provider business. It has selected 5 industry segments to focus that include energy (utility and oil & gas), transportation, public sector (railways, aviation and smart cities), large enterprises and web scale (Internet) companies. As the data consumption in these domains is exponentially increasing with the digital transformation undergoing in the domains, the play of telecom is increasing and that would require the scale and competencies of telecom infra providers like Nokia who could plan, design, implement and execute for these industries while they focus on their core business activities. The company is also witnessing growth in MSOs, which are redefining themselves exploring other growth opportunities that could ride on their infrastructure while their core business of live and on-demand video content shifts to OTTs.

Nokia is actively pursuing its manufacturing in India with over 140,000 sq. metres of facility in Tamil Nadu it manufactures a number of telecom products for 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. These are also exported to other countries. Around 50% of the base station products are exported to other countries from this facility in Chennai.

Besides, the company is actively engaged with various entities like government, industry associations, R&D centres and academic institutions to contribute to national importance missions like Digital India, Smart City and Make in India. It also runs a series of CSR initiatives for children and under-privileged sections of the society by brining small but meaningful changes in their lives.